Common, reusable iPhone-App configuration screen

I'm writing code that will allow my iphone-app to have a "configuration page".

A grouped, scrolling, UITableView... with cells that contain the needed textFields, switches, sliders, etc.

It is an ENOURMOUS amount of code. Is there an easier way?

Is there a way I could create a simple text-file, contain all my desired design choices and have my (reusable) code build the TableView for me?

Or... can I just do the whole thing quicker/easier in Interface Builder instead of code?

Basically there are two approaches here :

• you rely on what Apple gives you and implement a Bundle Settings (basically a dictionary that describes how the settings screen should look like), and then , your settings will be in the "Settings" application of the iPhone.

  The drawback here is that what apple provides is quite limited and you won't be able to implement some of the most complicated settings you can see in "standard" (pre-installed) apple application settings.

  That's why many developers are switching to "inapp" settings thanks to open source FWK or they reimplement everythingh from scratch but it can be a lot of code as you said.

• You reimplement your own UIViewController for settings or you rely on some framework that will provide you the UIViewController to extend from and ease your implementation. There are 2 good frameworks for that (Jesse cited one of them, but there's another one )
  

• InAppSettings ( http://inscopeapps.com/blog/inappsettings-10/ )
• InAppSettingsKit ( http://inappsettingskit.com/ )

A comparison of the two framework can be found here : http://inscopeapps.com/blog/inappsettings-vs-inappsettingskit/ (ok that's from one of the two authors but at least this gives an idea ;)

If you can live with the limitations of the standard application preferences in iPhone, you can actually create this using a settings bundle which only needs a plist and optionally a localized strings file.

You can check out Apple documentations for this: http://developer.apple.com/iphone/library/documentation/iPhone/Conceptual/iPhoneOSProgrammingGuide/ApplicationSettings/ApplicationSettings.html

Claus

If you're looking for a ready made and reusable solution, you can check http://www.inappsettingskit.com/

It's open source too, so it's useful as a base.

I never found an easy and efficient way to build complicated table view by using Interface Builder, so I think programming the settings view is more preferable.

If you're talking about using a text file or plist, you may want to mimic the Settings Bundle design of Settings app.

Load the plist data upon the app launch.

I've built something like what you're looking for. Going off Claus's answer as well, it basically just duplicates the interface of the Settings application using the same settings.plist file as the settings app. The only difference is that it's a view controller that you can put inside the app. There's a surprisingly small amount of coding involved, it was just a lot of looking at the settings app to see exactly how things were laid out.